thorpe to her husband, nor did Mr. Palthorpe make any mention of his wife, save to say he regretted she was not within.

'And I really do not know what time she will be back,' he added; a hint for the visitor perhaps, and one on which he was not slow to act.

'You have done more for me than I can ever repay,' said Mr. Palthorpe, as he stood taking leave of his benefactor. May I write and tell you how I get on in Australia?'

'O, you will have plenty to do without writing to me,' answered Mr. Hay; I shall hear of you through Doctor Dilton. Good-bye. I hope and believe you will succeed out there.'

'I hope I shall,' answered Mr. Palthorpe, better than I have done here. Good-bye, Mr. Hay, and God bless you. Some day perhaps I shall be able to tell you how I have felt your kindness.'

'Do not speak of that, please,' entreated the other; and then it was over, hurried at the last as all partings are. And while the daylight still lingered, Mr. Hay left Roding Park and took the road which led straight to the nearest station, eschewing the Forest and all that delightful sylvan scenery, of which Doctor Dilton made such honourable mention on the morning when, walking due west, he had been so suddenly addressed by the woman who was to spoil his life.

CHAPTER XII.

THE LETTER.

SOUTH of the Thames, in that part of London now known as a portion of the S. W. district, there were to be found for some years after the Great Exhibition many

pretty little houses in neighbourhoods that, although within easy walking distance of the City, seemed quite rural.

Many of these houses still remain, but their surroundings are rural no longer. One runs up against them in unlikely localities. There are some to be met with at the back of the Clapham and Brixton Roads, on the way to Wandsworth, round and about Camberwell and Walworth. Nay, I could name one street close to Upper Kennington-lane, where the passer-by, looking through the windows of the front parlours and the French windows of the back parlours, can catch a glimpse of green leaves and winding walks and well-grown shrubs in the gardens at the rear.

The London of that date bore all the traces of having been built less according to any orthodox plan than by individual fancy; and the same diverse personal characteristics which distinguished most of the thoroughfares before railways came and changed the appearance of all things stamped the suburbs, though perhaps with a fainter impression.

Now one man builds for many. 'Estates' are laid out for the habitation of future tenants as a workhouse or an asylum is prepared for the reception of its inmates. In these days the 'residence' no more indicates the preferences of the person who lives in it than a particular style of dress does the rank of the wearer.

Queen Anne houses are furnished with all sorts of incongruous articles, and often as not there is an utter absence of simplicity in the interior of a cottage.

It was different once. There used to be a certain correspondence between the exterior of a house and the proclivities of its owner.

Taste trained roses round the

windows, planted the wisteria, tended the jasmine till it grew over the gable of the little house. The gardener does all that now; he contracts for the creepers and the scarlet geraniums and the golden feather, which is only our old friend camomile under another name, just as the builder contracts] to run up so many (un)desirable residences at so much apiece. He or his fellow takes you and your neighbour, and the neighbour next to him, and gardens' you each, as it is called, at so much a head. Town houses and town gardens are as much alike as two railway trains. The initiated can of course detect such small differences as nurses profess to do in twins, but to the ordinary observer the effect is a distressing monotony.

It was not so formerly-ere Norwood became a part of London, while Streatham still remained a village, when the way to Wandsworth was a pleasant country road, when the Surrey Gardens were not built over, and when Vauxhall with its fireworks, its lamps, and its fortuneteller had disappeared no longer than the great glass house in Hyde Park.

In a detached villa, then, in what is now the south-west part of London south of the Thames, there resided, some few years after Mr. Palthorpe's departure from England, a certain Mrs. Hay. It was a very pretty house-pretty, small, unpretentious, well set back from the somewhat narrow road in which it was situated, and screened from observation by a thick laurel hedge planted inside an iron railing, and also by handsome and numerous shrubs as well as by some fine old trees.

A nice little residence, somewhat dark perhaps as regarded the front windows; but charming at the back, with its garden well

enclosed, with its smooth grassplot and many-hued flowers, its old-fashioned sun-dial (quite hidden away under the shade of the mulberry-tree), its ridiculous fountain, trickling, however, pleasantly into the stone basin, and making a cool murmuring music of its own in the warm summer weather.

On the afternoon, however, when the reader is asked to enter the gate and go up the broad path, and walk through the front door and cross the hall, it was not summer weather either at The Aspens, as the place was called, or anywhere else in England.

It was a dreary day in January; a biting wind raced down the roads and along the streets, and lay in wait at corners to pounce out upon unsuspecting passers-by. About the poorer neighbourhoods thinly-clad women went shivering over the pavements; infants in arms were crying with the cold; carmen ran beside their horses, trying to warm themselves while exciting the tired brutes to speed by the mere force of emulation. It was a dreary wretched afternoon without, one which made a snug house, a cosy room, and a bright fire seem all the more desirable by contrast.

She

But the lady who sat beside the fire in the drawing-room at The Aspens seemed to have no thought to bestow upon internal comfort or external misery. sat close to the hearth, leaning a little forward in her chair, her head supported by her hands, staring straight into the blaze.

She never moved her position or stirred a finger even when the opening of the door must have told her some one had entered the room. She did not turn round or greet the new-comer, a man, by even a single word. He came quite close to her and laid his hand on her head, and still she did not speak.

'What is the matter? Are not you well, Mira?' he asked.

He bent down to catch her answer, but none came.

'Has anything happened? Are you ill he again asked, repeating the sense of his former sentence, while varying its sound.

She remained resolutely silent. He could hear the ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece, but he could not hear that she made any reply.

He drew her head a little round towards the light, and looked at her. For one swift instant she lifted her eyes to his, and then slowly let them droop till the long black lashes hid them quite; then, as his hold upon her relaxed, she turned slowly once again towards the fire, and resumed her contemplation of the blazing coals.

Evidently he had but just come in, and could form no idea as to what it was ailed her. Clearly also these fits of gloom or temper or regret were not uncommon, for he seemed more perplexed than alarmed by her unaccountable preoccupation.

He walked towards the glass door which opened on the lawn, looked out into the cheerless twilight, came back with deliberation, and took up his position at the side of the mantelpiece opposite to that where she was sitting.

As he stands there with the firelight flickering upon his facecalm, erect, self-contained-you recognise him at once-him and her; you know it is the same man who walked westward some years previously very early upon a summer's morning; you remember that she it was who, from beneath the dark Portuguese laurel, spoke to and stopped him as he walked towards Stratford. Though it is winter now, and the scene altogether different, the scent of the flowers, heavy with night dews,

seems to float upon the air-gillyflowers and carnations, roses and jasmine, the subtle odour of mignonette-all mingling with the sweet breath of the coming dawn; while, surrounded with mystery and bathed in an atmosphere impregnated with perfume, she stood in the stillness and majesty of the departing night, beckoning him to her, beckoning him to ruin !

He remained silent for a few moments, looking down upon the fair picture upon which the firelight flickered. She was not a woman who posed for effect.

As

has been said in an earlier chapter, Nature had not bestowed upon, neither had art taught her, those wiles and graces with which others of her sex heighten their charms or make up for lack of them; but unconsciously the attitude she now adopted suited well her face and figure, the remarkable beauty of the one, the supple lissomness of the latter. She was well dressed too-the folds of a rich silk fell over the white hearthrug; she wore bracelets on her wrists, and precious stones glittered amongst the rings on her fingers. Lace, soft and creamy, made the soft fairness of her throat more attractive still; and a golden arrow was thrust with apparent carelessness through the coil of hair she arranged gathered into a great knot at the back of her shapely head.

A lovely woman truly—a sinner, but not a Magdalene. Any one with less idea of repentance never existed. She might regret the absence of a favourite dish at dinner, but remorse seemed to be a feeling she could not understand. Clearly, therefore, it was no sudden access of despair for wrong done-wrong which could never berighted-that was producing the symptoms the man who looked

He thought he was acquainted with all her moods and tenses, but as he gazed he acknowledged himself mistaken. Never before,

never, had he seen her sitting as she then sat, staring with that fixed hopeless expression into the fire, with her eyes full of unshed tears, and her fingers crushing all colour out of her delicate cheeks.

He drew a chair close to her, and sat down. He took her hands gently in both of his, and laid her head against his shoulder.

'Mira, tell me what it is,' he entreated. Have I done anything? have I vexed you?'

'No,' she said, with a gasping sob. 'No; O no!'

The years had changed and refined her voice. A life of ease and comparative luxury had rubbed little by little the external commonness off her speech and manner. Underneath them lay still doubtless the same nature, but its evidences were softened or obliterated. It was the same woman, and yet a different, as she who had paced the grassy glades of Epping, and roused at times in Doctor Dilton's honest breast a feeling of hatred to which he would have been ashamed fully to confess.

'What has happened, then?' he persisted. 'What is the matter?' She raised her head and answered:

'He is coming home.'
'What?'

Their hands dropped asunder, and they drew back-he from her, she from him-as though a sword had parted them; and yet it was but the one word he spoke; the one word so eloquent in its anguish, its horror, its despair.

If the man himself had appeared before them it had almost seemed less terrible. Then there would have been something tan

VOL. XXXVII. NO. COXX.

there arose a host of uncertainties, a thousand nameless terrors, the multitude of self-summoned accusers which dog the footsteps of the wicked when no living soul pursueth.

'When?' he asked after a pause, as though some long explanatory sentence had been spoken in answer to his exclamation.

'Immediately; he must be on his way ere this.'

Mr. Hay arose and paced the room. Up and down, up and down, blindly he threaded his way through the maze of furniture; he was not conscious of what he did; he wanted to realise that which was about to happen.

After some time, for the twilight had gone and the evening was darkening down, he came back to his old position by the mantelpiece, and said gloomily,

'I must think what will have to be done.'

'I will never live with him again!' she broke in hastily. 'Nothing could induce me to do that.'

'Do you think he would want you?' asked her companion, with that awful plain-spokenness, that fearful candour, which at such a crisis does duty for a sneer.

'Of course I do, or he would not be coming back,' she answered, taking the question as literally as it was put, though not in the slightest degree in the sense it was intended.

She cowed a little; for once, for one brief moment, she forgot herself.

'He would kill you,' she said huskily.

'Let him; it is his right,' he replied.

Then ensued another silence; it was she who broke it.

"Could not we go away anywhere?' she asked timidly. 'No,' he said. 'Why not?'

'Because I do not choose it. That which I have done is done, and I must abide by the consequences-we must, rather;' and he shuddered as he spoke.

She rose and came to where he stood. She laid her hand on his arm, and though her touch made him tremble he would not shake it off.

'John'-she had never before spoken to him as she was speaking now-you won't cast me off, you will not let him or any one take me away, will you?'

of

He looked out into the darkness for a moment, away from the firelight and the glow and the soft luxury, with a wild feeling of regret. O, for the might have been! for the sinless days of old! for that time to return which could come not back again, when choice was possible and a way retreat open! for the conscience void of offence! for the thoughts and the hopes which might be his never more, never, never more! Then the spasm was over, the agony of memory quelled, and he answered, without tenderness, but without reproach,

'He will kill me,' she said, in an ecstasy of terror.

'You need not see him.'
'He will insist on seeing me.'

'I don't think you need fear that,' he answered; but she did not notice the cutting merciless remark.

'He will, I know he will,' she persisted, going back to her seat and resuming her former attitude of utter hopeless abandonment. 'If you won't go away, I shall. I dare not face him. John, do you hear me? I dare not do it.'

'I hear you,' he answered from the other end of the room; for once again he was pacing its length. Make your mind quite easy; you shall not face him ;' then, struck by a sudden thought, he asked, 'How did you hear this? When did you know it?

'To-day; he wrote to me.'

To you? Wrote to you?' 'Yes, to me; he says he intends to leave almost immediately,' she added, with a little uneasy hurry in her tone.

'Give me the letter, I want to see it,' said Mr. Hay, coming close up to her.

'I have not got it here.'

'Go and fetch it, then, please ;' his tone was more like a command than a request.

'What do you want to see it for?' 'I wish to see it; that is sufficient.'

'It is my letter, and I do not think you ought to ask me to show it to you.'

'It is my letter as much as yours, and I insist upon your showing it to me,' he retorted.

'I shall not do anything of the kind,' she said; and again she rested her face upon her hands and looked into the fire, but this time with the sullen stubborn expression he had learned to know so well.

There was a pause; during its continuance both were, after their